Abstract
Before the advent of cheap, mass-produced (and largely cotton) textiles during the classic period of the Industrial Revolution (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries), clothing was relatively expensive and, because of the care it received, remarkably durable. Textiles often represented a substantial portion of the total assets held by early modern households. Drawing on over 900 after-death inventories of poor and lower middling Amsterdam burgher families registered by the Municipal Orphanage between 1740 and 1782, this article examines the role played by textiles as a “store of value.” The retention of clothing designated as “old,” “very old,” or “old and poor” reveals understandings of the worth of possessions. Indeed, textile goods were for many poor households their main store of wealth, comprising a significant portion of their accumulated assets over a lifetime. Textile goods were also a key access point to new kinds of consumption (new fabrics sometimes from exotic locations and made up in new styles) despite the relative poverty of the population leaving children to the Municipal Orphanage, suggesting that such items also carried important symbolic value not easily captured by their financial value alone.